UAW details part of Ford plan to end job security

DETROIT (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co began transferring workers to a Detroit-area parts plant on Monday as it begins implementing an agreement with the United Auto Workers to phase out a program that had once provided near total job security to union workers.

The first 50 Ford workers began work at the parts plant in Saline, Michigan this week, displacing existing workers covered by a separate UAW contract with Visteon Corp, according to two memos posted on the website of the union local that represents the plant.

By shifting a still undetermined number of Ford workers to the plant and putting other Visteon workers on permanent layoff from April, the automaker will be able to clear workers from a program commonly known as the jobs bank, the UAW memos said.

Ford, like General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC, has reached tentative contract agreements with the UAW as the automakers scramble to slash costs and preserve cash. The shifting of workers is one of the first disclosures on how Ford is dismantling job security for the union workers.

Ford spokesmen did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The only U.S. automaker to not seek a federal bailout, Ford has moved faster than its rivals in winning deals with the UAW.

Earlier on Monday Ford said it had also reached a deal with the UAW on changes to the funding of a trust set up to cover health care expenses of retirees that could save it nearly $7 billion in cash.

GM and Chrysler face a requirement under their $17.4 billion U.S. government bailout that they reach deals with the UAW to cut the cash drain from retiree health care and bring overall hourly labor costs in line with the Japanese automakers operating in the United States.

The Saline, Michigan plant is run under a series of arrangements worked out by Ford, UAW and Visteon.

The plant, some 1.6 million square feet where instrument panels and plastic interior parts are made, is one of 17 facilities that Ford took back from Visteon as part of the automaker's bailout of its former parts subsidiary in 2005 and has held under a temporary, Ford-managed business entity called Automotive Components Holdings LLC.

In August, ACH said a deal for auto parts maker Johnson Control Inc to buy the facility had been scrapped.

The UAW will detail the proposed changes to its agreement with Ford to union officials and members this week, the union said on Monday.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta, editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Leslie Gevirtz)